


Rest & Recovery

by Coshledak



Category: Murdoch Mysteries
Genre: Comfort, M/M, Sick Character, Sickfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-25
Updated: 2020-09-25
Packaged: 2021-03-08 00:14:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,669
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26646598
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Coshledak/pseuds/Coshledak
Summary: “I’d like you to relay a message for me,” Jack explains. “Or, rather, for Llewellyn.”The aura of concern seems to dilute George’s nerves quite well.“A message?”“He’s sick,” Jack replies, by way of explanation.--Llewellyn Watts is sick and not very clear on what that means in the context of a relationship. Prompted by @shadowgirl2237 on Tumblr.
Relationships: Jack Walker/Llewellyn Watts
Comments: 7
Kudos: 98





	Rest & Recovery

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was requested (not directly, but ambiguously) by [@shadowgirl2237 on Tumblr](https://shadowgirl2237.tumblr.com/post/628668243841892352/can-someone-write-a-sick-llewellyn-fanfic-please). I'm trying to think of more little Llewellyn/Jack things to write to distract myself from what is sure to be a horrifically frustrating storyline in S14, so I thought I would give this a shot!

According to Llewellyn, Constable George Crabtree tends to leave for work at a relatively prompt and consistent time each day. Jack only has to be patient enough to wait for him, which he does outside his building, and tells himself that he is not trepidatious about asking him for a favor. Llewellyn has assured him, several times now, of the constable’s outstanding compassion and that he—that Llewellyn—believes George to be understanding of their present situation.

_“You told him about us?” Jack asked._

_“Well, no,” Llewellyn replied, his food mostly swallowed but the answer not waiting for full propriety before leaping from his lips. “Not in so many words. But he’s a good man and…well, I’ve been told that he was meant to make detective some years ago, and it seems to me that he possesses the skill for it.”_

_“What does that mean, Llewellyn?”_

_Because the words he was being offered did nothing to comfort him. The less people who knew, the better. This was something they had agreed upon. And yet somehow, now, over dinner, it’s being casually remarked that one more person than Jack had been aware of may or may not know that they’re seeing each other._

_Llewellyn reached across the table and squeezed about his wrist. “I didn’t tell him, but I believe he might have figured it out. He did assure me, though, that he would keep it to himself.”_

And that has been that, more or less. Oh, Jack has asked Llewellyn several times since then for some sort of assurances or confirmation that George Crabtree doesn’t pose either of them a threat. But Llewellyn had met him each time with confident praise for George’s ability to be discreet and that he is not the type to gossip over private affairs.

“Constable,” Jack calls, when he sees him, though he’s well aware that his tone sounds more alarmist than was probably necessary. He startles George into nearly dropping his helmet.

“Ah! Mr. Walker, how can I help you?” And Jack can tell immediately that he is a bit off kilter with this interaction. 

It’s not so much that George is obviously uncomfortable as it is the slight lacking in understanding of what would be proper conduct for this particular conversation. That is to say: Jack figures, immediately, that he doesn’t make George awkward because he is a homosexual man. Rather, George seems boggled because Jack is courting his superior officer to an unspecified degree. In that way, Jack finds it much more endearing and also a little easier to breathe himself.

“I’d like you to relay a message for me,” Jack explains. “Or, rather, for Llewellyn.”

The aura of concern seems to dilute George’s nerves quite well.

“A message?”

“He’s sick,” Jack replies, by way of explanation. 

“Sick!” George exclaims, seeming at once relieved and worried. Jack smiles at the shift in his concern. “Is he alright?”

“It’s nothing serious, I’m sure, but I’ve persuaded him to take at least today to rest and recover. Could you let the inspector know?”

“Yes, of course.” George is eager in his kindness, and Jack feels his shoulders relax just a little. “You—ah—“ He pauses as someone walks by, another tenant leaving the building, and follows them with his eyes. He reaches up to affix his helmet then, talking in a quieter tone now. “You take good care of him then, Mr. Walker, and consider your message relayed.”

The low tone helps to hide their exchanged words, while Georges’ fussing with his helmet, seating it correctly on his head, helps to hide his mouth from passersby. Jack remembers, in a moment, Llewellyn’s praise for his discretion. He nods.

“Thank you, constable.”

They part ways, with George going to work and Jack going to the shop to pick up some chicken stock.

—

Jack is not so much surprised as disappointed—in an overwhelmingly fond way—to find Llewellyn about one-third of the way dressed when he returns to his room with a paper grocer’s bag. He is sitting at the table, curled forward with his face partially pressed against it and partially pressed against the arm that he managed to raise. The other one just hangs, sort of limp and tired, between his knees.

When Jack closes the door, he sits up abruptly, as if he had been caught napping at his desk at work. Which, quite honestly, Jack wouldn’t be the least bit surprised to find Llewellyn might have dreamed into truth.

“I’m awake.”

His voice is swollen with the stuffy congestion that had made him sound so miserable an hour ago, before Jack had left. There’s a glaze to his eyes that seems to get in the way of him fully comprehending where he is until they land on Jack himself, who stands in the doorway taking off his shoes. Then, upon not understanding why Jack would be standing in the police station, where he’s imagined himself, the gears of Llewellyn’s otherwise wonderful mind begin to churn.

“This…is not Station House 4,” he says, both as observation and as question.

“No,” Jack agrees, now free of his shoes enough to step further inside. He sets the grocery’s bag on the table where Llewellyn sits. His partner blinks at him in owlish confusion. “It is apartment fifteen.”

After a processing pause, Llewellyn begins to nod with sage fatigue. “Ah, yes. So it is.”

Jack starts unpacking the groceries, taking out the stock and bits of shredded chicken he acquired from his own shop, in addition to some vegetables from the market. 

“I told you to stay in bed,” Jack says. It’s not a proper scold, though, because he is smiling a little as he says it. 

“Mmm.” Llewellyn picks up some celery that Jack had set down, turning it over with a vague sort of wonder. 

“And, instead, you’re partially dressed and falling asleep at the table.”

Llewellyn shakes his head, but then stops and blinks aggressively, as it to clear some great dizziness from his mind. This time, he wags the celery at Jack. “I was not asleep. I was only resting my eyes.”

“Do you typically need to rest your eyes before you can finish buttoning up your shirt?”

“Hm?”

It’s then that Llewellyn looks down at the sorry state of his clothes. His pants are on and fastened, though his shirt is not tucked into them. He has buttoned it partway up and incorrectly, but still saw fit to put his vest on over top of it, which hangs loosely around his shoulders. Llewellyn plucks a little at his shirt, then pulls a little at his vest, before seeming to be quite done with both pieces and rests his hands and part of his forearms on the table.

“No, not typically,” Llewellyn answers, contemplatively. “But it is never too late to try something new.”

Jack huffs a gentle laugh through his nose, shaking his head. “Go to back to bed, Llewellyn.”

“No, I—“ He pauses, and Jack thinks for a moment that he’s lost his train of thought. But when he looks at Llewellyn, after taking out a cutting board, he sees a deep and somber clarity through the haze of sick. “I really must get to work.”

Llewellyn stands with a sudden, jerky movement. It’s something Jack has seen before, the way a sort of momentary fear manifests in him and forces his body to move. He looks like he needs to run, suddenly and swiftly, but like he himself doesn’t know why. And normally that might work—it has worked—but this time he underestimates his fatigue and how clogged his head is.

Jack very nearly doesn’t make it around the table in time to catch him, and now his heart has taken up temporary residence in his throat.

“Llewellyn!” And this time it is very much a scold. 

But Llewellyn’s weight leans into him heavily, and Jack watches the way he touches his own forehead, now damp with sweat that Jack hadn’t noticed a moment ago. He’s pale except for the areas where fever flushes him, mostly along his cheeks, and it takes him a moment to get his feet underneath him again. Even when he does, Jack doesn’t let go.

“I’m sorry,” Llewellyn murmurs, but his eyes are still closed. He squeezes them closed tighter, still holding his hand to his forehead. “That was…careless of me. I should have been more mindfull.”

Although Jack scolded him earlier, that perpetual tide of affection washes over him again, the one that warms his chest and spreads to everything else, too, whether it be words or actions. He reaches up to run his fingertips along Llewellyn’s cheek, brushing them over the hot and clammy skin.

“I know you care a lot about your work,” he begins, speaking gently. “But I have the distinct feeling that this isn’t about some important case, or feeling that you’ll be terribly needed today.”

Llewellyn opens his eyes, though only so much as he can when his forehead weighs down his brow. It’s like he’s scrunching the top part of his face down over his eyes, onto the bottom part, a sort of slow-motion dragging of his hand down his tired expression. And Llewellyn looks at him with such careful regard, like an alleycat gauging whether or not it can trust the coos and offered food of some stranger trying to coax it out from under a pile of garbage. It isn’t quite fear, but it is a deep, deep apprehension that wants to make way for hope but doesn’t fully know if it can, if it is allowed.

“What is it?” Jack asks, now directly.

“I don’t—“ Llewellyn stops himself, presses his lips together, then begins again once he’s dropped his hand from his forehead. He rubs the back of his neck instead, raising his eyebrows in a way that suggests a frank resignation. “I don’t want to be a burden to you.”

Llewellyn drops the words at his feet like he had torn his heart out himself and held it out. There is such poignant vulnerability in them, as if he expects to offer up these nerves, rent from beneath his skin, and have them thrown back in his face. He holds them out with no expectation but pain and regret.

Jack moves both of his hands to Llewellyn’s face, drawing his wandering, glass eyes back to him with as much focus as he can manage right now. Jack strokes his thumbs over his soft flushed cheeks.

“Go back to bed, Llewellyn,” he says, equal parts comment and invitation. “Let me take care of you.”

Llewellyn’s eyes seem momentarily lost, flicking between Jack’s as if the words he offered were code instead of purposeful instruction. But when he feels Llewellyn’s shoulders begin to relax, he gently tips his head forward so he can plant a kiss on Llewellyn’s sweaty brow. 

“Are you sure?” Llewellyn asks, and Jack has the sense that it isn’t because he doesn’t trust his answer so much as it is seeking confirmation. Seeking to hear it again. 

“If I wasn’t,” Jack explains. “Then I wouldn’t have asked Constable Crabtree to tell your inspector that you needed a day off.”

Llewellyn’s eyes widen just slightly, surprised, amazed, in a way that breaks Jack’s heart. In a way that no one should ever have to be, that someone would want to take care of them while they’re ailing. When Llewellyn speaks again it’s quiet and fragile.

“Thank you, Jack.”

From there, he helps Llewellyn undress back down to his underclothes and gets him into bed again. Though the exertion up to this point has been minor, the illness in his veins attacks with vigor at his exhausted body. Jack pulls the blankets up over him, sits on the edge of the bed, and pushes Llewellyn’s damp hair back from his forehead. His fever wasn’t so bad this morning, but it makes sense that it would get worse throughout the day, even without Llewellyn’s assistance by trying to go into work.

Without being asked, he sits at Llewellyn’s side until he falls into an uneasy sleep, stroking his hair and brushing sweat from his brow. When Llewellyn doesn’t stir as he stands up, Jack retreats back to the kitchen to begin making soup, fairly certain that Llewellyn shouldn’t be straining himself with anything more challenging than that. Besides, whatever he has hasn’t yet reached his stomach but that does not mean it won’t disagree with food.

It doesn’t take him long to make the soup, not with the stock already prepared, but he still lets it sit and simmer on the stovetop to give Llewellyn time to rest. When he begins to stir with a fit of coughing, Jack brings in some water and a cold cloth for his forehead.

“Why is it that I feel worse after sleeping?” Llewellyn bemoans. 

“Just a sign that you need more rest, I’m afraid,” Jack answers, smiling a little at the unusual petulance of his partner. “But you only slept for about an hour and a half, anyway, and you haven’t had any medicine or anything to eat.”

After a pause, Llewellyn makes a low and disparaging sound, almost a groan.

“What is it? Does something hurt?”

“No,” Llewellyn answers, with great betrayal. “I’ve just realized that this confounded sickness has robbed me of my desire to eat.”

Jack chuckles and shakes his head. “Not your ability, though, and I think it would be good to get some food and medicine into you.”

“You purchased medicine?”

Again, that soft mysticism and faint confusion. Jack’s expression relaxes, but he does his best not to betray some slight bitterness that Llewellyn would have gone for so long without some care given to him.

“Has no one taken care of you when you were sick?”

Llewellyn hums a little, in his usual manner, and then coughs when his throat and lungs protest the vibrations. Jack helps him to sit up, to take down some more water, and rubs his back until the worst of the fit has left.

“Not since I was a child,” Llewellyn replies, his voice now strained by the rawness of his throat. “Which, as you can estimate, was some time ago.”

“And so you’ve forgotten what manner of care goes into taking care of a sick person?”

“Well…no,” Llewellyn answers, but softer this time. Jack almost feels bad for the slight edge of unnecessary sardonicism to his reply. “Only that I didn’t realize that adults might do the same things for each other that they are so inclined to do for children.”

“I am so inclined, Llewellyn, to take care of the man I hold dear.”

Llewellyn looks at him then, once more his eyes searching for some cypher to the code of his words before finally settling on their simple truthfulness. He nods and, before Llewellyn can thank him again for what feels the most basic of human decency, Jack kisses his temple and stands up.

“I’ll get you some soup, and more water. Unless you’d like tea?”

Seeming to come out of a daze, Llewellyn looks up at him. “Just the water, please.”

Llewellyn does not insist that he hold the bowl or feed himself when Jack sits on the edge of the bed again, this time carrying a bowl of chicken and vegetable soup. He does not snipe that he is not an invalid, that he can take care of himself. He just leans back against the head of the bed and watches Jack with uncertain eyes until Jack offers him the first spoonful in some silent, tentative willingness to feed him if Llewellyn will just allow it.

And he does, though he seems a little uncertain of it at first. Jack suspects that it has less to do with feeling like he’s being robbed of his agency and more that persistent absence of what it is to be taken care of as a grown man. The understanding between both of them now that Llewellyn doesn’t know how to be taken care of, cannot begin to fathom what it would look like to let someone tend to him. And all of that only makes Jack want to tend to him more.

Once they’re a few bites in, Llewellyn makes a quiet ‘tsk’ sound just before the quiet, frustrated, “Not only do I not feel like eating, but this accursed sickness has robbed me of my ability to taste as well. Does its cruelty know no bounds?”

Jack chuckles, scraping the edge of the spoon along the lip of the bowl to keep droplets from falling.

“It’s only a simple soup, Llewellyn,” he replies, holding it up for him with a raised brow. “You aren’t missing much in the way of flavor.”

“I would like, at the very least, to be able to judge that for myself,” he grouses.

Although Jack had never really thought Llewellyn capable of such complaints, somehow they seem right at home alongside everything else that he already knows of him. To see him in such ill-humor does not necessarily please him, but it does prove at least somewhat amusing in a way that he did not really think Llewellyn to be. He finds Llewellyn wonderful on any given day of the week, but amusing is not a word he would usually assign to him. Not in this way.

He finishes the whole bowl of soup despite his lack of appetite, then contorts his face in a wondrous way at the bitterness of the medicine. Jack is certain that his exhausted mind and fatigued body are the only explanation for the way in which Llewellyn glares at the bottle.

“Why is it I can taste _that_ but not the things that I want to taste?”

“Otherwise you might not have any incentive to get better,” Jack answers, shrugging. “Or, at least, that’s the excuse my mother always gave when I complained. Finish your water. Swirling it around your mouth might dissolve the taste a little.”

Llewellyn does just that, swishing the water around his mouth more aggressively than Jack has ever seen him do with wine. It seems to help, enough so to surprise Llewellyn slightly as he swallows it down and nods, muttering some quiet relief that the taste is, at least, somewhat less now. He sinks back down into the bed while Jack gathers up the dishes, leaving the medicine on the bedside table. Before he can retreat to the kitchen, though, Llewellyn speaks up.

“Might I ask,” he begins, then yawns not of his own accord or permission, seeming even just a little annoyed with himself for it. “If you would…keep me company again? Until I fall asleep.”

Of course, Jack had already planned to do so, but there’s something in the way that Llewellyn asks it…or, no, perhaps what it is is simply that Llewellyn asked. That he had thought himself a burden—maybe he still does—and now makes such a small request, taking tentative steps into what Jack can only hope Llewellyn knows to be the all-encompassing love that he has for him. 

He reaches down, running his fingers back through Llewellyn’s hair again, watching the way that he closes his eyes and tips his face up into it. That seems reason enough to do it again before he pries himself away.

“I would be happy to,” Jack agrees, watching as Llewellyn’s eyes open just enough to betray how thoroughly fatigued his system is. He nods and yawns again, turning his face into the pillow when Jack draws back to take care of the dishes.

He decides against washing them right away, finding that resting in bed with Llewellyn is an easy priority. Before he returns to the room he picks a book out of his small collection.

At first he thinks that Llewellyn has already fallen asleep without him, but he coughs—a weak, sputtering little sound—and murmurs some minor complaint. Jack walks to his side of the bed, lifting the blankets to slide in beside him. 

“Do you want me to move closer?” Jack asks, and Llewellyn seems just tired enough not to question it before answering.

“Yes.”

Jack moves closer, until Llewellyn can press his face against his side and settle an arm over his lap, tightening it just a little in a momentary squeeze. Jack drops his hand slowly, brushing it through Llewellyn’s hair the way he had before. Llewellyn shudders as his fingertips graze down the back of his neck, but it only seems to bring more relief to his burdened body.

“I brought a book,” Jack says, turning it over to look at the spine as if he couldn’t recall what he had grabbed. “ _Frankenstein._ Would you like me to read you to sleep?”

“Mm, Mary Shelley,” Llewellyn murmurs, his nose once more stuffed up from lying down and the lack of soup steam. It affects his voice with a morose suffering, but doesn’t fully dim the light of his presently dry humor. “How appropriately horrific.”

Jack chuckles and finds himself speaking in hushed tones, as if Llewellyn were already asleep, or as if being too loud would rouse him suddenly to more alertness than he wants. 

“I thought that focusing on Victor Frankenstein’s misery might alleviate some of your own for a while.”

“Maybe so, though I do find myself highly sympathetic to the Creature’s anguish, personally,” Llewellyn replies, trying for his usual deep consideration but coming out mostly weary. Then, he sighs from under the weight of his ailed body, “Read away.”

And, with steady strokes through Llewellyn’s sweat-dampened hair, Jack does. He reads until Llewellyn’s fever drags him to sleep, and then continues reading on his own, silently. He makes note of the place where he stopped upon realizing Llewellyn’s sleep-steady breaths, just in case he should want to pick it up there again when he awakens. His gentle, soothing touches, however, do not cease.


End file.
